


Simultaneity

by Eggling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, fun times with the team tardis gang, jamie and zoe bond over past family trauma basically, referenced past family member death and child abandonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26234146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling
Summary: “What wouldyoudo if ye were in a time you’d already lived through? If ye could – if ye could see your family again, what would ye say?”Two, Jamie, and Zoe land in 1732, which raises some uncomfortable questions for Jamie when he realises his father and brother are still alive.
Relationships: Jamie McCrimmon & Zoe Heriot
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Simultaneity

**Author's Note:**

> on [tumblr](https://the--highlanders.tumblr.com/post/628236940110610432/simultaneity).

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

The sun was beating down on the back of Jamie’s neck, its warmth just harsh enough to tell him that he would regret not finding himself some shade later, but not quite enough to make him move. Digging his elbows into his thighs, he pressed his chin into his palms until his jaw ached and closed his eyes to ground himself in the slight discomfort of it. The grass around him was rustling and the sky was too bright for his eyes to focus properly and the rock he was sitting on was jagged and Zoe was sitting a stone’s throw from him making that terrible noise, and the whole business made him want to tear his hair out.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

He gritted his teeth. _Ignore it_. Zoe was only doing as the Doctor had asked, after all – and he was supposed to be helping her. His own chisel lay abandoned next to him, and the sight made the guilt in his stomach curl tighter until it threatened to strangle him

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“Will ye stop that!” he exclaimed at last. “Or – or take it somewhere else, at least. Go bother him.” He nodded towards where the Doctor lay sprawled out beneath a tree, eyes closed and book pages-down on his chest. “He needs wakin’ up.”

Zoe tutted at him. “I’m trying to break open these rocks, not the ones over there.”

“Aye, an’ it’s drivin’ me crazy.”

She shrugged. “You can move, then. If you’re not going to help, you can at least leave me to it.”

The worst of it that she was right, of course. She usually was, in the end. “I’m trying tae think.”

“Well, I hope you’re thinking about something useful.” Pushing herself upright, Zoe wiped the dust from her hands onto her trousers. “We’re close enough to your time, can’t you see anything out of place?”

Jamie snorted. “Just ‘cause it’s seventeen thirty-two doesnae mean I know what every rock in Africa looks like.”

“Oh.” His derision had been more angry than playful, and it must have shown on his face, in the bite to his words. Zoe’s smile had faded away, and she ducked her head to smash her chisel against another rock. She hit its surface at an odd angle, and it skittered away across the dirt. “No, I suppose not. Silly of me.”

Sighing, Jamie reached over to pluck a stone from the pile before her, picking up his discarded chisel to tap at it half-heartedly. “’Spose we’ll be out of here quicker if I help ye.”

Zoe murmured a wordless reply, busying herself with a fresh stone. Her hair slipped from behind her ear, screening her face no matter how hard he tried to catch a glimpse of her expression. His guilt at having snapped at her had fixed itself firmly in his throat, digging its claws in deeper to the lump that had formed there. He opened his mouth to apologise – then looked up to catch Zoe’s eye and realised that she had been about to speak in the same moment. They froze, each watching the other carefully before breaking into awkward laughter.

Jamie rubbed his hand over his forehead, leaving a trail of dust sticking to the sweat there. “Och, I’m sorry. I didnae mean tae -”

“It’s fine,” Zoe said, a little too quickly, a little too brusquely. “I shouldn’t assume that the past is uniform.” The words came out jarring and resigned, as if someone else had put them in her mouth. Jamie glanced over to where the Doctor lay sleeping and wondered whether they were his. “But -” She fell silent, clenching her jaw to suppress the question.

“Go on, ask.” Jamie nudged his shoulder against hers, and she leant away from him, exaggerating the impact. “I’m no’ gonnae bite ye.”

The sharp look she gave him told him everything he needed to know about her doubt – and he could hardly blame her, what with his prickliness only moments ago. But just as he had expected, her curiosity got the better of her. “Isn’t it – well, nice? To be back in your own time? You always speak of it so – fondly.”

Jamie shrugged, sweeping his gaze over the tall grasses around them. A few trees broke the shimmering line of the horizon, one or two with the dark shadows of animals clustered under them. It was as alien a place as he had ever seen. “Doesnae really feel like my time.”

“Not at all?”

“If ye were dumped in _your_ time, halfway across the world, would ye recognise it?”

“I expect so.” Zoe paused, wrinkling her nose as she thought. “It wouldn’t be that different, in my time.”

“Och, well. It is in mine.”

“But you’re out there, somewhere,” Zoe pressed on. “A – a different you, your past self. Living your life.”

There it was.

Sighing, Jamie let the rock and chisel in his hands fall to the earth in a cloud of reddish dust. They clanked together, filling the silence that stretched out between him and Zoe. The one thing he had been trying not to think of, and Zoe had gone and spoken it into existence. Worse still, she was looking at him as expectantly as if she had told him some interesting fact. “Aye, I’m out there.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” She was babbling on, as if she could not see the pain that Jamie was sure was written all over his face. “There’s two of you on this planet right now. You’ve lived through this moment before.”

“Aye, I have.”

At last, she paused to frown at him. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Like it’s a -” Jamie stared at her. “Of course it’s a bad thing. I’ve got tae sit here smashin’ rocks open, knowing what’s gonnae happen an’ not being able to change anything.”

Now it was Zoe’s turn to stare. “What do you mean, what’s going to happen?”

“Och, it doesnae matter.”

“Tell me.”

“Don’t want to.” The words forced themselves out from beneath his teeth, brittle and cold beneath the hot sun. They were half-true, at least, he supposed. His chest was all but bursting with the ache of knowing when and where they were, and the desperate need to tell someone – but not Zoe. Not Zoe, who was so logical, who tried so hard to hide her terror when she was forced to say something comforting. Who would take his hurt and feel it as her own without knowing how to dull the edges of it. Yet again, he glanced over at the Doctor, wishing he would wake up.

“I want to understand.” Zoe’s eyes were wide as a child’s, and he could see her as nothing else.

“Ye wouldn’t.”

“How do you know?”

Huffing out a soft growl of frustration, Jamie sat back on his heels to squint at the horizon. “What would you do if ye were in a time you’d already lived through? If ye could – if ye could see your family again, what would ye say?”

Zoe went very still at his words, her lips pursed in thought. She sat there for a long time, and all the while Jamie cursed himself for being goaded into speaking. At best she would laugh it off, and he would laugh too, and spend the rest of the afternoon with an odd sort of shame coiling in his stomach. At worst -

“I’d want to meet my parents.”

“Eh?” Forgetting his determination to avoid catching her eye, Jamie twisted around to face her.

He half-expected to find her smiling, to realise that it had been some sort of twisted joke, and was startled to see her looking as serious as he had ever seen her. “I’d want to ask whether -” She ran her hand over her cheek, and his heart clenched when he realised her eyes were bright with tears. Zoe crying was a new and frightening concept, one that he had hardly expected. “Whether they gave me away, or whether someone took me.”

“Zoe -” There was a terrible irony in the whole business, Jamie thought, that he had been so caught up in what she might say to him that he had not thought of what to say to her. He laid his hand on her shoulder gingerly, grasping her more tightly when she did not shake him off. “I’m sorry, I didnae know -”

“At least you know who’s out there. Where they are.” Zoe’s voice was shaking, but her tone was no less bitter fore it. “I don’t even know what they looked like. We might pass them in the street one day and I’d never know.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie mumbled again. “I didnae mean tae...”

“Go on, then.” Zoe waved him away, curling her hands into fists to rub at her eyes. “It’s just dust,” she added half-heartedly, as if trying and failing to convince herself. “What would you say to your family?”

Another refusal almost forced its way out of Jamie’s mouth, but he held it in. Maybe, just maybe, he had been blaming Zoe for a reaction she would never have had. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I don’t know what I’d tell them. It’s more like – the thought that they’re out there, an’ still alive.” He laughed without knowing why, wondering if he sounded a little hysterical. “I’m out there, somewhere. I’m eight. My wee brother’s four, an’ probably gettin’ under everyone’s feet.”

Reaching over, Zoe took his hand. “What happened?”

“My father an’ my brother -” Jamie drew in an unsteady breath. “They died. Not long before I met the Doctor. No’ together, either. The last time they saw each other they were fightin’, ‘cause -” He shook his head. “It’s hard tae explain. My brother picked a different side tae us. He left, an’ then a few months later we found out he was dead.” The corner of his mouth quirked into an empty, bitter smile. “Killed by a shot from someone on his own side. Shows how far it got him.” When at last he turned back to face Zoe, he found that she was staring at him, half in horror but half in confusion. “So ye see, it’s no’ a nice thought, tae be back to a time when he’s still alive. They’re both still alive. An’ in my time – after my time – my mother probably thinks I’m dead too. ‘Spose she thinks she lost all three of us.”

“Oh.” Zoe busied herself with a new rock, striking it open with more force than needed. The chisel sprung out of her hand, thudding down in the dust beside her. “I – I’m sorry I asked.”

“’s alright. I was tryin’ not tae think about it, but I wasnae doin’ a very good job.”

She was quiet for a long time, picking up the chisel and turning it end over end in her hands. He watched her, trying to read the twitching changes in her expression as she puzzled over whatever it was that had silenced her. “Is it terrible,” she said at last, “that I still envy you? Oh, I shouldn’t, but – at least you remember them. If you _did_ get to see them again, you’d know.”

Jamie shrugged. “Aye, I think I see what ye mean. But – at least ye don’t remember losin’ your family. Sometimes I wish I could forget losin’ mine.”

“Mm.” Zoe swept her gaze pointedly over the ground around her, taking in the scraps of rock that littered the dirt and settled themselves over her clothes. “I think we’re done here.” She tilted her head, frowning at Jamie. “Except for the one you’re sitting on.”

“What, this one?” Scrambling backwards, Jamie landed on the ground with an _oof_ of discomfort. He looked the stone up and down, taking in the strangely square edges, the too-regular patterns on its surface. “It does look a wee bit odd, now ye mention it.”

Zoe threw him a mock-stern look, clearly relieved to have changed the subject. “If you’ve spent all this time sitting on the rock we’re looking for...”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Raising his chisel, Jamie struck twice against the rock. Its surface cracked but did not shatter, so he struck it once more – twice – three times until it broke open, revealing its glittering insides. It might have been an agate at first glance, the gems conealed within deep purple and almost glowing beneath the light of the sun, but when he peered into it more closely he saw that they were formed into blocky shapes embossed with oddly straight lines.

Zoe was enraptured, her eyes firmly fixed on the inside of the rock. “Trust you to sit on it,” she said distantly, digging her hands into the dirt around it and tilting it up to examine it more closely. “When the Doctor described it – I didn’t think it would be so – so -”

“Beautiful?” Jamie suggested. She thought it over for a moment, then nodded, rolling it from side to side to watch it catch the light. “Come on, then.” Dragging himself to his feet, he brushed the dust from his kilt, taking Zoe’s elbow to pull her up and guide her over towards the Doctor. “We’d better tell him we found it.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Zoe linked her arm through his, clutching his elbow tight against her side. “Isn’t it a shame that we have to destroy it?”

“Aye, I s’pose so.” Jamie glanced over his shoulder to where it lay glittering. It did seem a shame to melt down such a pretty thing – but the Doctor had said it was dangerous, that it could tear the Earth apart in a moment. The thought made its shine take on a sinister gleam, and Jamie shuddered, turning hurriedly away from it. How strange it was, he thought, that such a beautiful thing could pose such a threat. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”


End file.
